Alice Clay, Go Away

I'm back again full of excuses and procrastinations. Still slogging away on Weekend Warriors, about a girl who joins the National Guard to get money for college and ends up in Iraq instead. I have tried as hard not to write as I have to write. And yet....I love the scritch-scratch of graphite on a clean piece of paper. I love the act of drawing the words. I love putting words together. My new daughter-in-law is a great beta reader. She told me I need 50 pages of my protagonist's good life in college before her unit is mobilized to show the reader what she has lost. What is college? Very loud music, illegal substances, and underage drinking. How do I make that interesting? I just want to play with the "good stuff", but of course it must all be good stuff. Why am I doing this to myself? Why can't I just go read a book and play my piano?